May 18, 2009 --
Give me your tired, your poor,
But not your muddled masses yearning to destroy me
No such wretched refuse shall reach our shore
Once here to flee from prison to be free
To move into the house for rent next door.
It took him just two days of being our President for Barack Obama to issue an executive order to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison within one year, as promised in his campaign and loudly heralded as a long overdue move to eradicate the grievous blot on our national honor. But just one little problem: what to do with the 241 detainees still there? Nobody wants to take them you would think they make up a leper colony. This has afforded the Wall Street Journal a field day, as they report the reactions of many Democrats:
“We're not going to bring al Qaeda to Big Sky Country. No way, not on my watch." So said Montana Sen. Max Baucus.
"I wouldn't want them and I wouldn't take them," insisted Nebraska's Sen. Ben Nelson.
Not Quantico, piped up Virginia's Sen. Mark Warner. After all, it "is in a very populated area in the greater capital region."
Look, "Alcatraz is a national park and a tourist attraction, not a functioning prison" for terrorists, said the office of California's Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Great Britain and Germany are apparently already overcrowded and can’t take in another couple of hundred people.
I admit to some personal confusion on this. Are we saying our prison system is so bad we can’t lock down 241 prisoners without letting them escape? If a prisoner jumped the wall and got loose, what could he do anyway before being caught? I’m surprised since community hasn’t said “put ‘em here, put ‘em here” since some small towns, particularly in Texas, have vied for prisons as the source of jobs and revenue. Could be part of the stimulus package.
But no, Republicans are using closing Gitmo to paint Democrats as not caring to keep American’s safe. As the WSJ reported, “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been hitting on Guantanamo since February, warning that the administration's decision to put ‘symbolism"’ over ‘safety’ might result in Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin al Shibh coming soon to a neighborhood near you.”
There is a kind of hysteria about this on both sides of the aisle. Legislation introduced by the House GOP prohibits the transfer of any of these detainees to a site without permission from that state’s governor and legislature. There is a "Keep Terrorists Out of America Act" rattling around the Congress. The Administration asked for $81 million to facilitate the closing, and it was killed. Another problem is the federal Real ID Acton the books that prohibits admission to the U.S of any alien who has engaged in a terrorist activity. I can see that question on an entry form. “Well, I did scare the bejeebers out of a mime performing on the street in Paris one time.”
It isn’t clear to me just how keeping Guantanamo going functions to make Americans “safe.” And what is the ultimate goal for dealing with these people? A life sentence? Are there any in there that don’t deserve a life sentence? How do we know? If reports are accurate the tribunals held were something Frnanz Kafka might have dreamed up. The Obama Administration first shut them down, but now will start them again, promising the equivalent of a “fair trial.” We are told some of these people were given to us by Bounty Hunters. We ought to make certain they meet the criteria of “evil” before we deprive them of any kind of life hereafter, except in the hereafter.
I have the answer to where do we keep them, so no politician has the guts to allow them to be imprisoned in his territory. Remember the tale of “The Man Without A Country?” Kept forever on one sailing ship or another, never allowed to touch shore? Take a ship or two out of mothballs and turn them into floating prisons perpetually at sea and house the detainees (after sentencing to Life after a proper trial). An LST from World War II, like my old ship, would do. Our war-time crew totaled about 175 which could be reduced by one fifth, and we had room for about 200 passengers. We could make our own fresh water, held months of supplies and carried enough fuel to go around the world two and a half times. It could be refueled, restocked and crew changes made at sea, never having to touch shore. No Governor Senator, or Congressperson would have to worry about terrorists let loose among them. This would be as cost effective as building and operating a federal prison. Besides, some use could be made of these voyages. Send it up to the Artic to watch it melt, and report back to Al Gore.
The subject of torture will not go away, and now of all things it has enveloped Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Replacing last week’s cable hoopla of Elizabeth Edwards, who as one pundit put it “fed herself to the vultures”, and Wanda Sykes, the feminine gender stories this week covered Michelle Obama speaking to more than 12,000 at UC Merced in 90 degree California heat, Rachel Alexandra winning the Preakness as the first filly to do so in 75 years, Miss California having her top blown off by the wind, and Nancy taking it on the chin for waterboarding as though she poured the water herself.
Before we take up the sins of Nancy Pelosi, a caveat: I am her closet admirer, Botox, pearls, and all. Have been since she came to the fore. Sometime back I wrote a little doggerel about it, “I’d like to get cozy with Nancy Pelosi” and so forth. Perhaps it is because she is such a strong female, and I am drawn to strong females. In Time magazine one-time Democratic House leader Richard Gephardt said, with admiration “If you look at the lion family it’s the female of the species that’s the killer.” Tough as nails, Pelosi is angry to be suddenly the center of controversy about torture, which came out of the Bush Administration.
For the first time her Republican opponents think they’ve nailed her. They believe they have caught her in a lie, and from the Republican point of view there is nothing worse than a lie (Bill Clinton), unless it is told by one of them (Bush: “We do not torture.”) She did uncharacteristically waffle when the question of her being one of the “gang of four” in Congress, two Democrats, two Republicans, briefed on waterboarding. Let’s follow the bouncing ball.
First, it was a briefing. That is not the same as authorizing, nor can you call that subjecting it to oversight. The CIA required absolute secrecy about the briefing, which came weeks after the fact. Waterboarding had already long been used. She says she was told legal opinions were that it could be used, but it had not been yet. The CIA says they spelled out the whole nine yards.
On the other hand, former Sen. Bob Graham, Democrat from Florida and at that time Chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee does not recall “on that day of there being a discussion of something that would have been as neon as waterboarding or other torture techniques.” But the briefings were separate. There is a lot more he said, they said, she said but the bottom line is the briefing was not an approval session.
Vicki Divoll, a former deputy counsel to the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, was the general counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2001 to 2003 and says it was “unlawful for the executive branch to limit notification, as it did here, to the Gang of Four.” The law calls for the “Gang of Eight, which includes the majority and minority leadership of the House and Senate, in addition to the intelligence committee leaders.”
No matter who was told what, those briefed had no recourse even if they objected. They were sworn to secrecy. Might they have tried to go straight to the President to object or go on record as objecting? Slipped a little note under the President’s door?
No matter how much the Obama Administration wants this to go away so other business can get done, it has a life of its own. In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the torture memos Phillip D. Zelikow, who was counselor to Condoleezza Rice when she was Secretary of State, said "The U.S. government over the past seven years adopted an unprecedented program in American history of cruelly calculated, dehumanizing abuse and physical torment to extract information. This was a mistake, perhaps a disastrous one. It was a collective failure in which a number of officials and members of Congress and staffers of both parties played a part.” We are going to have to tar and feather everybody.
We might save a little of that in case we need to use it on the financial industry. Goldman Sachs is repaying its TARP loan, a good thing but they have a little incentive. That gets them out from under any restrictions that might limit executive pay, God forbid. And you still run across headlines like this one: “The zombie banks are demanding to be let back into the financial mall so they can pillage the global markets anew.”
Before we put the tar and feathers away let’s not get too excited about that letter the Health Care Industry sent to the President pledging to voluntarily reduce health care costs, a lovely thought, yet consider a couple of things. Private companies in the free market must do everything legal to increase the value of stock for their shareholders. That means it behooves them to try to insure those least likely to need it and to turn down every claim they can. That is the way the profit motive works. Joe Conason in the New York Observer gives us this quote from Frank Luntz, the opinion research expert: “The first critical step toward stopping real change is pretending to support it.” Hence the letter.
As noted in the New York Times “what the rest of us call health are costs the medical-industrial complex call “income giving.” They do not want to give Americans the choice of buying into a public health care plan as an alternative to private insurance. The industry plans are sketchy, non enforceable and about as helpful as take two Aspirins and call me in the morning.
Personally, I would favor running all mice and rats out of town, but there are animal rights activists who are fighting for the ethical treatment of rodents. “Rats and mice tend to get a bad rap” said one activist. If you say so. But I think Cheney and Rumsfeld get better treatment than they deserve.
People are adjusting to economic stress in a variety of ways Restaurants report that more diners are sharing entrées. Some high-end restaurants in New York, Chicago, and Los Angelesare converting to “Bistropubs,” lively bars serving up scale bar food.
The clothing industry is experiencing a curious twist. Usually in hard times men’s fashion suffers more than women’s wear. Not so this time; sales of men’s clothing is actually up slightly, while women’s sales suffer. The reason is said to be that no guy wants to look like a banker anymore or, as a story in the New York Times put it “bleakonomics ousted chiconomics.” This fits in with a cartoon in the May 4th issue of The New Yorker magazine. Two young executives are walking down a street, one with briefcase, one without who says “I’ve stopped carrying a briefcase. I don’t like to flaunt my employment.”
According to David Colman of the New York Times, the object now is to look like a “creative professional” … pieces of sporty country-club clothing … “premium jeans and high-top sneakers, the right madras, the right pair of khakis, the right cotton sport jacket, the right gingham shirt." It is good that some of the personnel directors of companies I worked with did not live to see this. Their life’s work of enforcing dress codes would have been in vain. I managed to game the system just a bit by always wearing bow ties, and got away with it but barely. It was my little statement about being a “creative professional.” No one would ever have bought me in the role of “banker” anyway. And I’ve got bank statements to prove it.
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